When I first read
today's verse I felt the compound dharma-yaśaḥ-pradīptā
(“shining with the splendour of dharma”), as per the old Nepalese manuscript, ought to be a noun
phrase rather than adjectival. It seems Gawronski felt the same and
suggested that pradīptā (shining) could be amended to pradīpa
(lantern). I have followed Gawronski's conjecture and amended to pradīpa.

In BC9.48, in his reply
to the veteran priest, the bodhisattva distinguished between two
dharmas – the dharma of liberation, and the dharma of a king:

Again, as for the
tradition that rulers of men realized liberation while maintaining
their status in the royal family – that is not so. / How can the
dharma of liberation, in which peace is paramount, be reconciled
with the dharma of a king, in which the rod is
paramount?//BC9.48//

Disinclined to take this point, the counsellor began his speech by mentioning
dharma three times:

“This
mantra-containing resolve of yours is not improper; but neither is it
suited to the present time. / For to deliver your father in his old
age into sorrow might not be, for one who loves dharma as you do,
your dharma.//BC9.53// Assuredly, again, your judgement is not very
acute, or else is dull, with regard to dharma, wealth and desires, /
In that, for the sake of an unseen result, you pass over conspicuous
wealth.//BC9.54//

After that the
counsellor talked a lot about making effort (yatna) in the direction
of release (mokṣa). We examined how the same words evidently meant
something very different in the Brahmanical tradition from what they
came to mean in the Buddha's teaching.

In today's verse the
counsellor concludes his speech by coming back to dharma, using the
word dharma twice in his closing verse as he also used the word
dharma twice in his opening verse.

So my sense is that
Aśvaghoṣa is goading us, for the final time in this Canto, to
engage the grey matter and think again about what the word dharma
really means. What did it mean to people before the time of the
Buddha's enlightenment? And what did the Buddha mean by dharma?

In asking this question
I remind myself of my son when he got lucky in what students at
British universities call a viva – an oral examination.
Having prepared for exactly the question that came up, my son told me
how he felt obliged to insert a pause before beginning to speak, to create the impression of somebody going through a process in order to arrive at the answer.

In similar way I have
been thoroughly briefed by Zen Master Dogen as to the answer to my
own question of what the Buddha ultimately meant by dharma. The
Buddha-dharma, asserted Dogen, is to sit. And to sit is the
Buddha-dharma.

Thus, in the final
analysis, I think that with the tiresome speech of the counsellor,
which has thankfully now just ended, Aśvaghoṣa's intention has
been to goad us in the direction of yatna, mokṣa, and dharma that
the counsellor has never seen even in a dream – in the direction
of the effort which is sitting, in the direction of the coming undone
which is sitting, and ultimately in the direction of the dharma
itself which is sitting.

So much for what I
think. What, in Aśvaghoṣa's record of the Buddha's teaching, does the
Buddha say? How does the enlightened Buddha, when he speaks to the
enlightened Nanda of dharma in SN Canto 18, speak of dharma?

In the words of the
counsellor who is steeped in the Brahmanical tradition, then, dharma
is duty, to be done; and dharma is a spiritual or religious aim of
life, to be believed in. Aśvaghoṣa's hidden agenda, as I perceive
it, is to cause us to consider the difference between such views of
dharma and what Nāgārjuna calls saddharma, the true dharma, the
Truth, whose direction he describes as sarva-dṛṣti-prahāṇāya,
“towards the abandoning of all views.” This dharma, as the Buddha speaks of it, is not so much to be done and is not so much to be believed in; it is rather to be stood firm in, or to be sat firm in.

I honestly don't know
this morning whether I am the highest person in the world or the
lowest. Is it possible for one person to be both? For most of 2014 I
have been more or less ill, and can't help feeling, when I look back
on my life of fearful and greedy end-gaining, that my burden of bad
karma is a heavy one. At the same time, as a result of having made a
methodical effort for the last 30 years or so in the direction of
real release – i.e. not in the direction of a Brahmanical or
Buddhist fantasy but in the direction of real neuro-muscular undoing
in the real context of actually sitting – it is evident to me that
when I sit in the morning, I sit firm in four
dharma-directions.

I could have told you 20 or 30 years ago, having read it in Shobogenzo and believed it, that "the Buddha-dharma is sitting and sitting is the Buddha-dharma," but I dare say that I sit more firmly in the dharma now than ever I did then. Whether I feel healthy
or ill, whether the price of gold goes up or down, whether other
people affirm me or negate me, I sit firm in four
dharma-directions, and know that nothing will ever shake that
firmness.

Moreover, as a result
of choosing (guided by what I don't know) to train as an Alexander
teacher under Ray Evans, who understood the importance in Alexander
work of primitive reflexes, I seem to be singularly well placed to
voice those dharma-directions in terms of (1) Alexander's four
primary directions, and (2) four corresponding primitive vestibular
reflexes.

In the first
instance I wish to let the neck be free. I wish my whole being to
expand, as it is released out of the grip of the primitive fear
reflex.

Secondly, I wish to
allow my head to go forward. I know what it is like to sit in such a
way that the thought of sitting upright stimulates that baby balance
reflex which causes the head to
be pulled back. I don't want to be held in the grip of that
reflex, which is a friend and close ally of fear. Rather I want my
head to release forward. But not forward and down. I don't want to
sit all curled up like a baby in the womb, and I don't want to slump
forward. No. I want to allow my head to go forward and up.

Thirdly, I wish to
allow my back to widen. To that end, I think of the two sides of
myself being separate from each other, left side going left, right
side going right. I am aware of my two sitting bones and my two legs
and my double-spiral musculature, and am aware of my two arms. My
hands moving away from each other and away from my body, I open my
arms. And then I bring my hands together. As the palms come into
contact I think my two sides coming together and think of my two
sides releasing apart, palms in contact, elbows directed out, upper
arms directed away from each other, widening across the upper part of
the arms as I widen the back – the whole back from the top of the
neck to the bottom of the pelvis. What I have described in this
paragraph is (a) the function of what I call the goalkeeper reflex, which
separates the self into left and right sides, and (b) the inhibition or
integration of that reflex by the action of bringing the hands to the
midline.

Fourthly I wish my
pelvis to release my legs out of itself, so that the pelvis works as
part of the back, and not as if it were part of the legs. Again, I am
aware of my sitting bones, which are part of my pelvis, and I am
aware of my legs the top of which are joined to the pelvis and are
resting on the round cushion, the knees of which are on the floor,
and the feet of which are crossing the midline. With palms still
together, I bow, rocking forward on my sitting bones in such a way
that the pelvis and the legs remain separate, and rocking back. I
rest my hands on my lap in such a way that the fingers are
overlapping and the thumbs are touching at the midline, and sway from
side to side. Again I sway in such a way that the pelvis moves with
the rest of the back, all in one piece. In so moving, I am releasing
my body out of the grip of the fourth of the four primitive
vestibular reflexes, which I call the cat-sit reflex.

These four directions,
which I have come to understand in terms of their relation with four
primitive vestibular reflexes, are nothing that I believe in. But I
have come to sit firm in them.

What FM Alexander
expressed with his four primary directions was a discovery that he
made that has universal validity – just as Einstein's discovery of
e = mc2 has universal validity, and is not a function of anybody's
belief in that equation.

Seeing the connection
of Alexander's four primary directions with the four primitive
vestbular reflexes (the Moro Reflex, Tonic Labyrinthine Reflex,
Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex, and Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex, to
give them their scientific names), helps me to understand that what
FM Alexander discovered was a truth of universal validity. His four
directions, in my book, are just saddharma-deśanāḥ, true dharma
directions.

Let the neck be free

To let the head go forward and up

To let the back lengthen and widen

While letting the pelvis work as part of the back.

So, I venture to
submit, the Buddha-dharma, in light of these four directions, is just
to sit. And just to sit, in light of these four directions, is the
Buddha-dharma.

VOCABULARY

evaṁ-vidhāḥ
(nom. pl. m.): mfn. of such a kind , in such a form or manner , such

dharma-yaśaḥ-pradīptāḥ
(nom. pl. m.): shining with the splendour of dharma